The Financial Zone
The Financial Zone is a visual investigation into the financial world and its corporate culture. Nick Hannes focusses on situations behind the scenes of a number of financial institutions in the Netherlands and Belgium. He created the photo series as an autonomous commission, given by the State University of Groningen and Noorderlicht.
When the media report on economics, they usually show images of workers or operational personnel somewhere in the production chain. If white collar employees are depicted at all, it’s mostly though stereotypical stock photography. Men and women in suits, smiling wide and shaking hands, represent the dynamic character and diversity that the company wants to radiate. We rarely see them in real action.
Photographer Nick Hannes (Belgium, 1974) went to the head offices of a number of banks and financial companies in The Netherlands and Belgium to depict office life in a documentary manner, with office employees, those in charge and the echelon in-between playing the lead.
Modular systems and clean desk policy are their environment. The new workplace is social and flexible, fashionable and homely, ergonomic and technological. Company restaurants offer healthy meals and corporate mindfulness is on the rise. There is fitness, a prayer room and art on the wall. Well-being in the workplace is important in a time characterised by stress and burn-outs.
Hannes’s photographs are subtle observations of an astonished outsider. In a universe not exactly known for visual spectacle, he focusses on the relationship between man and his workplace. He searches for personal accents in a generic environment, meandering along the thin dividing line between banality and surprise, between humour and alienation.
This photo series was commissioned by the University of Groningen and Noorderlicht as part of the cycle Imagining Science. Hannes has been in dialogue with several researchers at the university. The cycle is founded on the idea that science and art have much in common: an urge to explore the world around us and to make acquired knowledge tangible, to share it. These commissions are inspired by university research whose subject is in keeping with the Noorderlicht themes. In the long term, this captures a multifaceted picture of scientific life.
With thanks to all the companies that have cooperated: Aegon (The Hague), Argenta (Antwerp), Baloise (Antwerp), Bank J. Van Breda (Antwerp), Belfius (Brussels), KPMG (Zaventem), PwC (Amsterdam), Rabobank (Utrecht).